Transcript of interview with Carol Forsythe by Sam Copeland, March 2, 1977

UNLV University Libraries Carol Forsythe i An Interview with Carol Forsythe An Oral History Conducted by Sam Copeland Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas Special Collections and Archives Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada, Las Vegas UNLV University Libraries Carol Forsythe ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2017 UNLV University Libraries Carol Forsythe iii The Oral History Research Center (OHRC) was formally established by the Board of Regents of the University of Nevada System in September 2003 as an entity of the UNLV University Libraries’ Special Collections Division. The OHRC conducts oral interviews with individuals who are selected for their ability to provide first-hand observations on a variety of historical topics in Las Vegas and Southern Nevada. The OHRC is also home to legacy oral history interviews conducted prior to its establishment including many conducted by UNLV History Professor Ralph Roske and his students. This legacy interview transcript received minimal editing, such as the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader's understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. The interviewee/narrator was not involved in the editing process. UNLV University Libraries Carol Forsythe iv Abstract On March 2, 1977, Sam Copeland interviewed Carol Forsythe about her experience living in Las Vegas, Nevada. Carol first describes the details with which she was familiar about her husband’s career as a firefighter, specifically facts about the growth of the Clark County Fire Department. Forsythe later talks about the development of the town when she first arrived in Las Vegas, and she later describes the different residences at which she and her family lived. She also describes the different changes in building and development over time in Las Vegas, and she mentions the early use of swamp coolers before air conditioning. The narration concludes with Forsythe’s description of the Helldorado tradition and its changes as well as her family’s Episcopalian faith and the churches they attended. UNLV University Libraries Carol Forsythe 1 My name is Sam Copeland, and I’m interviewing Carol Forsythe, and she’s gonna tell us about Clark County Fire Department in 1953. I’m not gonna take from my personal experiences; I’m going to take from my husband’s experiences. They didn’t have any Clark County Fire Department in 1953; it was formed in October, and they started out with nine men, and that included the chief. And those nine men were to protect the highest amount of income for any property in that small area. 1954, January, was when they actually officially started, and Bill Tralese was the chief, and previously he had been engineer with the Las Vegas City Fire Department. The eight men that he had with him were all city firemen, too, but he took over. They went from one station and nine men in the end of 1953 to—they also had one truck—and they went from that time to now, I think there are about 270, what they call line personnel—those are the ones that actually fight the fires and everything. And they have twenty-five support people, they have ten stations, eleven engine companies, three ladder trucks, four paramedic companies, and those were just added in the last year. And then the airport is also county fire department, and they have three crash trucks in their own units out there. Let’s see, in the twenty-three years the fire department’s been in existence, they’ve had four chiefs. The first one, of course, was Bill Tralese. The second was Kit Carson, then Calel Henley, and the present one is Leroy Hawks. Of the nine original men that started, only one is left. In case they’re interested, that one is my husband. (Laughs) Let’s see, unless there’s some specific questions, that’s about all I could tell you about the fire department. Carol is gonna tell us about the records that they have at the fire department that anyone can see. Of course, they’ve kept complete records of everything over the years, and they’ve had a lot of important things like that El Rancho fire and different ones. And anytime anybody would be UNLV University Libraries Carol Forsythe 2 interested, any of the officers would be glad to go through the files and let you see or use anything that you’d be interested in. They have a lotta pictures and support material. Carol, do you think you could give us some idea of how you spent the last twenty years here in Nevada, Las Vegas? When I came here, it was certainly a lot smaller than it is now. We lived on Stewart Street when I first came here, and it was 1921 Stewart Street, and it was three houses away from Stewart’s Market, which is sort of a landmark because it’s been here a long time. And Stewart’s Market was the end of the world; there was nothing after Stewart’s Market but desert. And now, of course, it’s built clear up out Boulder Highway almost to Henderson. The night I arrived, the first thing I saw coming from McCarran Airport to town that impressed me was the Flamingo Hotel sign, and it was like it is now: it was tall and round. But it had neon circles all over it, and they lit up periodically at different intervals up and down the building, and inside of each neon sign was a little flamingo. And I thought that was about the most exciting thing I’d ever see was all those little flamingos lighting up and down. I came here—the day I arrived was April the 9th, and the next morning, by ten o’clock, I thought it was the hottest place I was ever in. When I left Ohio, it was downright chilly—you still had to wear coats in the daytime and everything. And it must’ve been close to a hundred by at least noon, and I couldn’t believe it could be that hot anyplace. I spent about twenty-three years raising children, so I haven’t had a lotta time to be out in the public. I am probably an expert on PTAs and schools and doctors and dentists, and that’s about as far as it goes. We lived on Stewart Street for about six months, but we thought the rent was so tremendously high that we could hardly get by—it was $125, and it was a one-bedroom, and so we put our application in as what was known as Victory Village then, and it’s not even in existence now, and it’s out in UNLV University Libraries Carol Forsythe 3 Henderson. And it was, at one time, government housing, and you had to be in a low income bracket, which we were because of our fire department, and so in a few months we moved out there and lived there about three-and-a-half years. Then we moved back to Las Vegas and lived in Kelso-Turner, which was another government project for low-income housing. They sorta charged you according to your income, and we lived there until we bought a house. Children attended North Ninth Street School most of the time, and then when we bought a home, they went to J.M. Ullom half sessions one year, and the rest of the time they went to (unintelligible) until they moved to junior high, which was K.O. Knudson, then Valley High School, and when Chaparral was put in, the last two transferred over to Chaparral. I guess because of my husband’s occupation and the fact that we were raising so many children, we have not been much on entertainment or the Strip hotels. But when we came here, you could see the biggest (unintelligible) entertainer in the country for the price of one beer and dressed anyway you wanted to dress. In fact, nobody dressed formally then—in fact, most everybody had cowboy hats on, cowboy boots, big belts. There were no covers, no minimums—whenever we did go out, we spent a lotta time just walking around watching everybody play at the tables, but we didn’t do it ourselves. Most of our entertainment was outdoor things that we could take the children to, and when we lived out in Henderson, then when we moved back to Kelso-Turner, the town wasn’t grown up enough, and you only had to drive or walk about six blocks, and you were out in the desert, and you could have a picnic right there. In fact, let’s see, Lamb Boulevard, which has houses all along it now, clear over to Boulder Highway housing tracts, there was absolutely nothing out there, and that was really considered far out in the desert. And we used to go out there and take a picnic and spent the afternoon out there. There was only one drive-in movie at UNLV University Libraries Carol Forsythe 4 that time. Another form of entertainment, not only for us, but it seemed like a lotta people, was to go out and sit at the airport and watch the planes take off. And we’d take a picnic lunch out there and maybe sit for hours and watch all the planes take off. I think when we first came here, too, Las Vegas High and Rancho High were the only high schools in town. And the university was here, but it was one building, and it was, seemed like many miles from town—you had to come a long ways to get out here. And it was just a very small road; it was nothing like the thoroughfare that it is now. And most of their classes, even though they had a building out there, most of their classes were held at night at Las Vegas High School. Let’s see, when we came here, Southern Nevada Hospital, of course, was in existence, and St. Rose de Lima Hospital in Henderson, which is run by Catholic sisters, Dominican nuns. And then the old Las Vegas High Hospital, which was on Ogden Street—it is still in existence, but it’s no longer a hospital, it’s—I don’t know, something like a halfway house—and it was privately owned by a group of doctors. And I think the main reason that it finally went out of existence was all the doctors died or left town. Let’s see, we came from a very small town in Ohio. So, we first came here, aside from Stewart’s Market, the other market was used was Food Land on Fremont Street, and at that time, it was the bottom of Fremont Street, because by the time you got down to Charleston and Fremont, there was absolutely nothing there but desert, and I think there’s a bar still there on the corner of Charleston at that five corner point that’s called, or was called at that time, the “bank club.” Anyway, Food Land Market was the most modern supermarket in town at that time. Of course, there’s no comparison in the traffic now in the roads, compared to twenty-three years ago, because even to go out to Henderson and back, it took you almost no time at all. It was no traffic. Of course, it seemed like a lot longer distance then because it wasn’t all built up in between. Like I said, Food Land Market was about the end UNLV University Libraries Carol Forsythe 5 of very much building, and then when you get to the corner of Charleston and Boulder Highway, that was the end of the world. So you were, from there, clear out to Henderson with absolutely nothing along there. Sometime, oh, maybe five, six, seven years after we got there, they built an amusement park halfway between Las Vegas and Henderson, and they had, supposed to be a permanent thing, they had a Ferris wheel and a rollercoaster and everything like that, but it never did anything at all, and over the years, it was converted to a place where they sold trailers and a place where they sold cars, and I think out there, now, they sell, oh, metal or ironworks to decorate your front yard, or gates or posts or anything like that. But it took, it just seemed like you were travelling far away to go from Henderson to Las Vegas. Of course, the roads in town, they still—they’re modern roads now, but they still haven’t built them to do too much for flooding. At that time, everything just gushed down from the middle of town out into the desert, and you didn’t really have that much of a problem because there wasn’t anything out there but desert, so nobody really got flooded out then; they do now. In the early years when we lived out in Henderson, Henderson was flooded a lot, especially areas in Victory Village. We never did, but I know some people, the water would come in, a couple times came in two or three into their homes and ruined everything. This probably has nothing to do with anything, and people still may have problems with it, but the cockroach problem was tremendous. When we first moved out to Victory Village in Henderson, it was absolutely overrun with cockroaches. And they had kerosene cooking stoves, kerosene heating stoves—a week after we moved in, they took those out and put modern ones in, but the first night I spent there, you didn’t even to turn off the lights; the cockroaches came from everywhere, and I am not exaggerating, they were so large, you could hear them walking on the blinds. I sat up the whole night, making UNLV University Libraries Carol Forsythe 6 sure with a flyswatter that none got on the baby or my husband, and cried all night long. And before he went to work the next morning, my husband took me to stay with friends where I stayed until they fumigated the place and put the new modern stoves in so we didn’t have to use kerosene anymore. And everybody told me it wouldn’t do any good, the fumigation, because the units were four in a row—four apartments in a row, one-bedroom units, and they were all serviced by the same swamp coolers. Most places have air conditioning now, but at that time, you used swamp coolers, and the ducts for the swamp coolers were just one continuous thing, so if your neighbor next door had cockroaches, you were gonna have cockroaches no matter what you did. And I couldn’t live here if I had cockroaches. [Recording cuts out, tape ends] When I first came here, for many years—in fact, until the last, I guess, fifteen, we always had a swamp cooler, and almost everybody had swamp coolers. They’re a very inexpensive way of handling the heat problem, but they aren’t nearly as effective now, and so most everyone has gone to air conditioning. I don’t know if it’s backed by any scientific date or anything like that—my opinion is, the reason the less effective is the rising humidity. For a swamp cooler to work properly, the humidity has to be extremely low all the time, and if it isn’t, then the swamp cooler does very little except circulate the air. And of course, when we came here, except for a few palm trees here and there, and for the Huntridge area, which is back of the Huntridge Theater, that was quite built up, and they had a lot of foliage and grass and everything. But there was very little foliage and green things and grass, and over the years, as the population has increased and everyone has yards and trees have grown and everything, it seems that we have much more humidity than we used to have, and so I feel that’s why the swamp coolers are not as effective. Actually, though, even then, they weren’t too effective in August. For some reason or another, UNLV University Libraries Carol Forsythe 7 our humidity was always up some in August. So, if the heat bothered you, you had to suffer a lot in August, because the air was just circulates by the swamp cooler. And with swamp coolers, you have to have some things open, as opposed to air conditioning where you have everything close. You had to crack windows and everything with a swamp cooler. Also when I first came here, a black entertainer, biggest name in the business, did not stay in the hotel where he entertained. They were usually house on the Westside. They came in for their performances in the back door, performed, and then left. Under no circumstances were they allowed to go into the casinos or to play at the tables. I don’t know about eating in the restaurants—I assume that was the same. But I know there were always things run in the papers that they certainly could not play at the tables. And of course, if the biggest names in the country who were entertaining could not play at the tables, then no ordinary black citizen can even play at the tables. The only occupations that I knew of that they held were porters, maids—more or less janitorial services. There were no dealers, no waitresses, waiters, no job that wasn’t considered the most menial task. Aside from Nevada Southern University, there was also adult education, and most of those classes were also at Las Vegas High School. Then about six or seven years ago, the community college was initiating Nevada and Las Vegas in particular, and they started out with classes sorta splattered all over. And then they had the building down on Main Street, and since then, they built their own campus out in North Las Vegas. I believe, a couple years ago, all adult education that was in the Clark County school system has now been incorporated in the community college system. When we came here, Helldorado had already been established, and I believe it’s the Elks Club that sponsors it every year, and it was a weeklong celebration, sort of, to renew Western UNLV University Libraries Carol Forsythe 8 customs, and there would be things going on every night, things during the day, and then four different days, they’d have parades. They’d have one day that they devoted to the children’s parade, and one day for Western parade, and old timers’ parade, and then on Sunday, the last day, they would always have the really nice fancy parade where they would have bands and participants from all over the country come in. They have a three- or four-day rode, they would hold what they call the “kangaroo court” right in the middle of Fremont Street uptown, and then if you didn’t have a Helldorado button on, then they’d put you in jail right in the middle of the street, and you’d have to pay, I think it was $5 or whatever it was for buttons to get out. They still have it, but over the years, in fact, probably maybe just the last five, it’s gotten smaller and smaller. It’s still Western-oriented, but it isn’t where everybody in town dresses up Western. At that time, every grocery clerk, every cocktail waitress—everybody in town wore Western clothes. You just didn’t go out of the house if you didn’t have Western clothes on, or a Helldorado button, or both. That’s all anybody did, those six or seven days, was something connected with Helldorado. I guess it’s because that Western theme is sorta stepping away from us that it isn’t so big anymore, and I think that they’ve cut it down to just two parades every year. They still have what they call Helldorado Village, which is more or less a carnival thing, but they moved it from the old Elks site where it used to be down on Las Vegas Boulevard North at the stadium to the convention center every year, so you don’t have to walk through the dust and the dirt, which was half of the fun. They still have the rodeo here, which is certainly not as big as the Calgary Stampede, but it’s still one that all the big rodeo people travel to. Like I said, the parades are very small now, and as far as the days, I think it’s only two, and although we have a lotta people come on the big one, it’s nothing like it used to be. And they’ve held in May UNLV University Libraries Carol Forsythe 9 every year, is the traditional time to have it. They still do have contests where the men grow beards and everything, but it’s nothing like it was twenty years ago. Let’s see, we’re Episcopalians—there’s an old joke with the Episcopalians that, they say that the Episcopalians never go anyplace until the railroad comes; however, the railroad was here when I got here, so the Episcopalians were also. There were two Episcopal churches when I came here: one in Boulder City, St. Christopher’s, and one in Las Vegas, Christ Church, and it was almost uptown, corner of Ogden and Second or Ogden and Third. I believe there’s a parking lot there now. It was something I wasn’t used to at all. Episcopal churches back east are very formal, and I wouldn’t say dark, but subdued lighting because of the stain glass windows and everything, and of course you had Christian kneeling benches, and they folded down from the pew in front of you, and here, the sun streamed in all the windows, you were sitting right uptown, the traffic was going by all the time you were in church, and you could hear it with the windows open, because they used a swamp cooler, too, and they had a lot of the windows open. In fact, in the spring on Sunday mornings, they didn’t use the swamp coolers—just opened the windows. The kneeling benches were not padded, they did not fold down; they were just there. You had to walk around ‘em and step over ‘em. Father Jones was the priest at that time, and he did not have what we call high church; it was more or less low church, very informal. I thought he was a lovely, charming man who never had a sermon that wasn’t from his heart; I don’t ever remember seeing him use a note. At home, I had worked in a volunteer capacity for a priest at home, and so when I came out there, of course, I was very homesick and very lonely, and seemed like the logical thing to do, so I called him, and he didn’t have any help. And so I volunteered and helped him several mornings a week. UNLV University Libraries Carol Forsythe 10 Let’s see, I believe it was the same year I came out, I came out in April, and I—well, we’ll skip that part for right now—anyway, Father Jones was interested in building a new church, a larger church, and he had one way or another gotten the land to build the church on, which the new church stands on now, and it’s the corner of East St. Louis and Maryland Parkway, but all they had at that time was the land, and he was working on raising the money for that. And as I said, I came in April, and I believe it was the following, very early spring or late winter—it might have been the next year—a man who was supposedly either Father Jarett’s friend or someone that he had been counseling tracked him down at a local drive-in restaurant. I don’t remember the name of it, but it was up there on the corner of East St. Louis and Las Vegas Boulevard South, I believe, on one of those corners—the corner going towards town on the left hand side if you were going toward town, and the one closest toward town. And he was in the car with probably the members of his family, and the man walked up to him with a gun and threatened him, and Father Jones got out of the car to talk to him, and he shot him and killed him right there. And Tyler Jarett came to take his place, I believe, and he’s the one who managed to continue the drive to raise the rest of the money and build Christ Church on its present site. I believe, let’s see, there’s now an Episcopal church off Boulder Highway called St. Matthew’s, about halfway out to Henderson. There’s one in the opposite end of town near the municipal golf course, and that’s All Saints. There’s one in North Las Vegas—I can’t remember the name of that, and that’s probably, was the third one in town, then there’s St. Luke’s which is in Las Vegas, and I think that’s all now. But when I first came to town, even though it was a very informal town, and a lot of cowboy attire was worn and the hotels were informal and everything, at church, at least in the Catholic churches and the Episcopal church, the ladies wore hats and gloves—the men, of UNLV University Libraries Carol Forsythe 11 course, white shirts and ties and jackets. I’m not sure about the Catholic Church, but I don’t even think they all wear hats anymore. None of the women in the Episcopal Church wear hats and gloves anymore. Father Jones not only had the church up there practically right in the center of town, but the parish hall and where his assistant lived were connected to it. In the point in town where the parish house was, I remember what hours I worked, and I’m sure all the rest of the house, there were constantly people coming and going because they had lost their money, had no way to get back home, people that were hungry, people who had children, no way to get back to their homes, and since Father Jarett and the Episcopal church were right there in the middle of town, that was the first place they came to, and he and his assistant seemed to always manage to do something for ‘em one way or another. Even, at times, they would have ‘em sleeping up there and staying there until they could contact their families to send money for them. It was certainly a lot different then. The Christ Church that’s at the corner of Maryland Parkway and East St. Louis now, even though the dress isn’t as formal, the church itself and the atmosphere go back more to eastern style rather than to what they were when I first came here of the informality. When I left Ohio for the first time, I made up my mind that I was gonna have to like it out here one way or another because I was probably gonna spend a good part of my life here. It wasn’t that hard to grow to like. It was different because there’s no green foliage or anything, but you don’t have that, or at least you didn’t when I first came here, it’s getting more crowded, but when I first came here, the desert was lovely and quiet and peaceful. [Recording cuts out]